The Dermatology Department at the University of California, San Francisco, has a long tradition of training promising young scientists to be successful, independent investigators. With the recent expansion to the Mission Bay Campus, UCSF has added a significant amount of research space (over 1.5 million square feet of research space in 6 new buildings), has recruited a good number of new faculty members (>100), and will continue to do so to take advantage of the new space being made available. The UCSF Dermatology Department has also expanded over the last 5 years in terms of research space, the number of faculty conducting basic and translational research, and the number of residents and fellows. The UCSF Dermatology Training Program encourages physician scientist trainees to pursue cutting edge research in any laboratory at the university. This allows the trainees to choose from all the outstanding UC faculty, regardless of their departmental affiliation. Building on our successes in the past and capitalizing on the UCSF expansion, we propose to expand our training program to include physician-scientists whose interests are focused on patient- oriented research. With this expanded mission, the UCSF dermatology training program prepares physicians and Ph.D. scientists for a lifetime of scholarly pursuits with the ultimate goal of understanding the molecular basis of skin diseases, finding new therapies for these diseases, and ensuring that scientific discoveries lead to advances in public health in an equitable and cost-effective manner. Our two-fold goals of exposing our physician scientist trainees to the rich scientific and clinical research milieu at UCSF and of recruiting Ph.D. scientists to study skin biology in the department will ensure that a cadre of young scientists will pursue academic careers in dermatological research and advance the field in fundamental ways.